


And To Ashes You All Shall Return

by audi



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, DAENERYS IS MY QUEEN, Episode 6, F/M, I just want to cry, Multi, Season 8, Tragedy, but not really, compliant, i get what happened with daenerys but she wasn't given the character devolution she deserves, i think i'm hating on sansa but i love sophie, i want to stab jon snow too, not kind to westerosi folks, not okay with season 8, so i'm really not okay so i am going to take it out on the characters, westeros fucked daenerys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-03-08 15:53:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18897850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audi/pseuds/audi
Summary: They called her the Mad Queen, Daenerys Targaryen.She may be mad. It does not make her wrong.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First, this is not in any way related to In Media Res. That will be on hold until I can get my feels out for this season. Because.
> 
> Who is okay? Because I am not. I want to rage and if I had my own Drogon (who made me cry btw because oh my baby love come here i'll give you a hug and i'll never let you go) I'd be unleashing my fury and fire at Season 8.
> 
> While I get the poetic ending that the ptb were aiming for, I resent that Dany was not given the character devolution she deserves. She was built up from the first season until episode 4 season 8 as someone who is trying and doing her best to be the Queen everyone else wants her to be. To be the Queen she aspires to be. She wants to be the good queen. The Liberator. To Break the Wheel. To Unchain the World.
> 
> Instead, she gets to be painted as unhinged, which, okay, granted it runs in her blood. But if this is the point we are going for let me point this out to you, while not invalidating the deaths she caused in King's Landing:
> 
> 1\. She lost her children in Westeros, because of Westeros, for people who did not even care that she lost them. For people who took and took and took from her until she had nothing more of herself to give. If this happened to you in real life, wouldn't you snap? Granted, anyone of us would not snap to the point of burning a city, but such is the power of Daenerys. The consequences of our actions are proportional to the power we each of us yield. Fact.
> 
> 2\. The people around her who took everything she had to offer without offering anything in return ahem ahem ahem north ahem ahem ahem already take her for the mad queen no matter how hard she was not. So why not just give them what they want? After all, she's already lost more than she has left. *shrug*
> 
> 3\. I wanted to punch Tyrion when he used Sansa and Arya against Jon. And then punch Jon, too. Because isn't Dany family, too? Both men were hypocrites here. Or whatever the term for those who close ranks on "family" and they forget the one they're leaving is "family" too. I am sooo frustrated with this part because I have been on the side of the one being left behind. Just because I do not want to do what everyone in the family was doing. Granted, again, it was not to burn a city. But it hurts when the people you considered family, and these are the only ones you have left, and in the end you see that you really do not mean a lot to them at all. 
> 
> So you know, I get Dany. I really do. And you know, perhaps it was only Jon Snow in the whole entire show who had character continuity, someone who stayed true to who Jon Snow is, and has always been. But what does it say about him, for all his love of family, for all that he professes he loves Dany, when he did not even care to protect her from herself? He had no right to look so shocked and disbelieving after he saw Dany die in his arms. He knew what he was doing. He did not regret it. So why look so shocked, Jon Snow? 
> 
> But, at the end of it all, I still want my Jonerys. With Drogon. And Rhaegal. And Viserion. 
> 
> But for now let's not put relationship tags first, for all the bashing and lecturing I got from the other one. LOL.

**STANDARD DISCLAIMERS APPLY. I DO NOT OWN GAME OF THRONES AND ITS CHARACTERS.** Although my characterization might differ in part from the books, which I have not read, and the series. 

 

So as I have said in my lengthy opening spiel lol -- I am picking up from episode 6 of season 8. All hail the most disastrous season. Like, literally. It's one disaster piled upon another. And! I love the visual effects, I love Drogon, I love the ashes falling like snow, I can even respect the storyline, but. Well. I just prefer to have one of my own. 

* * *

 

He is an old man now, he knows, or an old imp, depending on who you ask. The time has gone for petty grievances and personal bigotries to be buried. Westeros is healed, indeed, the new generation a number enough to have mended from The Massacre.

 

They are the only ones who remember, their rag tag team of Westerosi.

 

And where are they now?

 

Scattered and divided. Bran the Broken, King of Westeros, or whatever King that does not feel, that says simply what will come to pass will come to pass -- and Tyrion cannot, for the life of him, understand why one would not try to do another. He, who believes there is always another way. 

 

"You lost faith in Daenerys Targaryen and betrayed her, when she did not follow _your_ other way. That should only show you how there is always just one end to all beginnings." Bran said, meeting Tyrion's frustrated gaze, at one time during a Small Council. It had only been him, the King, and Brienne, and his breath caught at that. Because he's been fighting for the opposite, that he had forgotten how he had done otherwise before, how dark those days had been for him, how utterly lost and desperate for Daenerys to answer for her crime. The biggest crime of all. 

 

It has been twenty years, and those years, mostly hard rather than good, had afforded him another perspective. 

 

He shook his head, pulling himself from melancholy. That Daenerys was wrong does not make him, Tyrion Lannister, right. That Tyrion was right at one time, does not mean Tyrion is right every time. 

 

He looks to the East, the direction where Drogon with his mother were last seen. He wonders idly if the dragon would ever return to Westeros to avenge the death of his mother, to purge the world of those who robbed Daenerys Targaryen of what she believed her rightful place. But there has been nary a shadow nor a whisper of a roar from that direction, and overtime they all managed to bury that one (enormous, gigantic) threat at the back of their minds.

 

Guilty people are as such, Tyrion thinks, smirking to himself. They try to move on as fast as possible. 

 

"My Lord Tyrion,"

 

He turns, a small smile playing at his lips, even as he raises the hand holding a glass of wine. "Your Grace," he starts, before doing a courtesy, "What news from the North?"

 

Sansa Stark just smiles, the blue in her eyes thawing somewhat. Tyrion blinked, before turning his attention back at the east. 

 

"You look East frequently, my Lord."

 

He smiles, drinking from his glass before replying, "Tis a beautiful sight, the East. The sun always shines in the East."

 

"Are you sure it is not the memory of the Mad Queen that makes you turn so?"

 

The way she says it makes Tyrion almost indignant. Sansa has not had an easy life, yes. She was forcefully taken from innocence and guilelessness that her parents, and even her own misguidedness, had placed upon her. Life has not been fair, for Sansa, and now that she knows power, learned it from despicable men and women, she took it greedily, and took to it like a swan to water. She is a good woman, a great leader, but she is also self righteous. 

 

All good leaders are, at some point, but that is neither here nor there, from her perspective.

 

"She was not always a Mad Queen." He replied, carefully.

 

"She was was mad when it mattered, and look where it got us," she retorted, pouring for herself wine.

 

"Well," he started, "at the expense of her life and the city, Cersei and my brother, and the dynasty of the Lannisters, are dead, any usurper to the Crown is dead, the Monarchy as we know it is dead, we have risen the country from the ashes of death, and yes there are a lot to be said of the means but where it got us is this. No wheel, no tyranny, and peace."

 

He could feel her stare at him, the ice of her gaze always one frost away from winter whenever their conversation finds it way to Daenerys. He does not understand it, not fully, not _truly,_ no matter how much he  _knows_ he understands it. He's chalked it first before to Daenerys being a Targaryen, and ergo from the South, or Daenerys having been raised in Essos, and not in Westeros, and  _then_ a sister's jealousy, and  _then_ a woman's fickle heart. 

 

He knows it is all correct, Sansa having confirmed at one point or another, not directly but by passing commentary of this and that, but two decades have passed and Sansa speaks as if Daenerys is still around the corner, haunting in every shadow of Westeros. 

 

As if all she has done is King's Landing. 

 

As if Sansa wasn't one of those who cheered when the Daenerys Targaryen, her dragons, and her army, stood for Winterfell. 

 

And the crux of it all, is that Tyrion knows,  _knows_ , for all his indignation now at how Sansa and everyone else is with the name of Daenerys Targaryen, he was like that as well.

 

* * *

 

AN: Remember, this is fan fiction. This is fiction of a fictional world, a fiction of a fictionalized fictional world. If you will not be able to constructive, and you're just going to tell me that you read this just because it was in the new stories for whatever category, or that you read because of the tag, and you're going to lecture me what the characters are or are not from your point of view, I would like to remind you that this is a fic that I wrote, with my own perspective, with my own characterizations, and that if you don't like it you can just scroll past it, and or write your own fic. Because we have to remember to respect that we are all of us hurting one way or another post GOT. 

 

thank you. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and so it begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still haven’t watched the entirety of episode 6. I stopped at Dany dying, because I don’t want to hate everyone else. And ruin the entire GOT for me.

~~~~~~~~What’s west of Westeros is more land. More people. Strange, _different_ ones.

 

Arya Stark, A Girl, No One, scoured the lands for masters of craft, of weapons and its arts, and sometimes a kind old master takes her in. Most of the time she is turned away. Time, she had thought. Time would make them see she can be one of them,  _patience_ would make her one of them. 

 

But she never did manage to win them over, even after twenty years of living with them. 

 

Granted, she spends most of her time in the dense forests, or in secluded mountainsides, the least populated areas where she would be ostracised less for her strange tongue, her unfamiliar ways. She goes into their capital once a week, and most of the time she borrows faces just to see the people. To learn.

 

Her most recent stay with a master of hand to hand combat took a lot longer than her usual ones. She was, for the better part of five years, only with the master, practicing, learning. Two years of those were spent convalescing, for she was struck sick with fever and body malaise, same as all the foreigners in the land. Most of them died. She was lucky to even be breathing. 

 

So it was with shock and a general sense of trepidation when she saw a little girl, younger than she was when she went with her father down at King’s Landing, carrying a doll. 

 

In itself it should not have been an issue, but the doll had long blond hair in intricate braids, had pale, almost luminescent skin, and, when the child waved it about in the air, Arya saw the eyes were the distinct violet she knew she would never forget. 

 

The incident alone should not be alarming. If it had only been one child, if it had only been a hundred children. But as she forayed into the bustling city, she noticed even the elderly were at some point wearing something of the sort — necklaces, bracelets, rings, even. Some, with that likeness alone, but many had a variation with a dragon curled around woman. 

 

Daenerys. 

 

There was no denying the likeness. 

 

Curious, she ventured further, following the traffic of human feet. There were all kinds of people with her — young and old, mothers, fathers, children, and they were all smiling as they paused before an archway, bowing their heads in seeming reverence before going inside. 

 

Arya followed their example, her interest more than piqued, but the feeling of trepidation sank its claws into her insides. Anything that involved Daenerys and her dragon — their history and legacy, it always unnerved her, always set her on edge. 

 

The Mad Queen was dead, and the dragon quiet. As far as she knows Targaryens are just names, legends of history. (Except there is one man yet alive who has that blood in him.) 

 

Her musings are brought to a halt when she sees where everyone is converged. It is an open space. There is no make shift stage. But what is at the front where all in attendance can see is a life size depiction of Daenerys Targaryen, with Drogon towering above her, wings spread, but his tail curled around his mother. 

 

“What is this?” She whispered, torn between awe of the likeness, the details of her eyes and hair, the colors of Drogon’s scales. 

 

“It’s the Dragon Queen!”

 

Her head snapped to her left and down, where the first child she saw looked up at her. 

 

“She’s come back from Death and has come to save us from the Dragons of the Mountains!”

 

”What?”

 

”The evil dragons! The ones who spread sickness and makes men mad! Are you alright, lady?” 

 

She had to shake her head, slowly backing out of the gathering. 

 

Daenerys Targaryen is dead, and she should stay dead. Why were these people worshipping her like she was a god? 


End file.
